I am a hypocrite.

I tell the kids in my life to embrace their inner weirdo. We’re all weird in some way, right? It helps inoculate them from bullies and understand that the ways they are different from their peers can be beautiful.

I believe that. On so many levels. I have not lived a “normal” life, so I have never striven to be “normal”. I have, however, striven to appear normal. Like dumping all your laundry in the closet before guests come over.

Because what is normal?

I’ve said it before, and I will say it again: words matter.

Pay systems and policies aren’t the only things that are becoming more patient centered in healthcare. Over the last several years, I have noticed that the language of healthcare is changing, too. When I contracted meningitis, the word that was casually thrown around to describe my likely future was “vegetable.” It came from the use of “vegetative state” to describe a person who appeared to have no awareness of either internal or external circumstances (comatose). It was a term that had been used for almost 100 years, and the ancient Greeks actually used it to indicate a lesser form of life, one that had no soul. Like a plant or a vegetable. Now, we recognize that this word is more than a little insensitive.

That is an extreme example, though not uncommon. It’s almost as if medical staff didn’t think we, or our family, friends, or other loved ones, can hear them when they talk about us.

In my last post, I made a distinction between everyday anxiety and what qualifies as a disorder. I suspect that I bordered on disorder when I was young, but I mostly grew out of it. Now, the residuals are all things I can live with. For me, that’s the difference. Can I live with it or is it getting in the way of the life I want?

I went to a different high school than the kids with whom I’d spent the last decade in elementary and middle school – including the extra year I took after I recovered from meningitis. They called it Reading Readiness, but it was basically a repeat of kindergarten. Going into ninth grade, I was totally intimidated by being surrounded by strangers. I knew an upperclassman or two, but that didn’t count. It wasn’t as if we had access to the same classes.

I came across an interesting headline recently saying that the US Preventive Services Task Force is recommending that all adults under the age of 65 get screened for anxiety. Apparently, the task force was working on this issue before the pandemic, but symptoms of anxiety have risen 25% since COVID hit. I’m not sure what the pre-COVID baseline was, but an increase like that is a big one.

It’s no wonder. Everything seems less stable, more seems outside of our control. On a personal level, in the last two weeks, my psyche has decided to destroy my circadian rhythms, not allowing me to sleep until the wee hours of the morning, if at all.

People go different directions when faced with emotional challenges. Some people start distancing themselves as soon as they understand what they’re facing. Others steer into the skid, knowing what’s coming, trying to get ahead of it. Some people draw from their community for support. Others prefer to handle it on their own. Some people turn to faith for strength. Others, not so much.

I still remember the day I lost the foundation of my own faith.

I was never a big laugher-out-loud, no matter how many times I use the acronym in my texts. It’s not surprising since I spend most of my time on my own (even before the pandemic) and, according to the American Psychological Association, we laugh 30 times more often in social situations than we do when we are alone. We react to the reactions around us, and our laughter can last longer when we’re in a group, too. How often do you see a comedy with friends and find yourself giggling about a specific line or two for hours afterward?

Other than the occasional silliness from the kids in my life, who are sadly growing older and less prone to spontaneous laughter that is fun to share, I’m not sure I realized how long it had been since I really laughed.

I had a great appointment with my endocrinologist this morning. My numbers are all good. My long-term blood sugar measurement is the second lowest it’s been in my whole life. One of my kidney function measurements dropped, but because the calculation changed, not because I am doing worse. (They used to do separate calculations for African Americans, which is stupid. African American kidneys work, or don’t work, the same as everybody else’s.) But at the end of the appointment, she did drop that she would stop seeing patients sometime between this December and next July. She will only be teaching after that.

This is a circumstance that every chronic patient who has found the right doctor dreads

I haven’t talked about my weight issues lately, probably because I’m not where I want to be. Why talk about it until there’s something positive to say, right?

I have been nutritionally educated for 31 years. From the moment of my diabetes diagnosis, I started learning about healthy nutrition -- both foods and management techniques. With very few exceptions, there is not much more anyone can teach me. Now, following the healthier path is something different entirely. I have tried plans, apps, support services; I’ve even considered fat camps for grown-ups. None of these really work for me. It’s a habit I have of looking for sometimes expensive external crutches when what needs to be fixed is in my head. I’m acutely aware of what I need to do, and I just . . . don’t. I’ve even been successful in the past, so I also know that I am capable of achieving these particular goals.

Someone asked me once whether my diseases affected my daily life, implying that the diseases were add-ons to a life that looked like theirs. In a split second, my daily life flashed through my mind.

Uh, no.

I don’t actually remember what it felt like to wake up feeling healthy or at least what I assume healthy people feel like when they wake up.

Here are the things in my normal (as in no particular flare-ups or episodes) day that may not seem normal for others.

I finally got COVID. It was not what I expected.

Nearly all my friends and family have had it, whether triple or quadruple vaxxed, mask-wearers or not, about 90% of the people I know have had to muddle through. If I knew about it, I tried to check on them, and everyone said it was like a cold but 10 times worse. Mine was like a cold but 10 times easier.

Let me clarify.

I decided a long time ago that getting a cold or the flu was a price I was willing to pay to be close to the littles in my family. I would go visit and even if a kid just had a little sniffle, inevitably I would get sick. A couple of times, I would get home thinking I was fine only to stand up and think to myself, “That’s not right,” and end up with a 103-degree fever. Plus, there’s my annual October sickness. And while everybody else’s colds and flus last a few days, maybe a week at the most, mine usually run about three weeks.